With red lights and a warning voice, the system will ask riders not to block shuttle doors.
By JEAN HELLER
Published March 5, 2004
TAMPA - You're racing to catch a plane at Tampa International Airport. The shuttle to the airside is there, but it's about to leave. The doors are closing. You reach out to bang the edge of the door with your bag to get it to pop back open.
Red lights flash in your face and a voice issues forth from the ceiling commanding you to wait for the next train.
Would you?
The Hillsborough County Aviation Authority is counting on it. The board that runs Tampa International Airport Thursday approved a program to add flashing lights and an audio warning to the closing doors on the shuttle trains that run between the airport and the parking garage.
The system, which has been operating as a pilot at Airside F, is intended to prevent passengers from jamming luggage into the doors as they close, which can damage doors and delay trains.
"People get right in the doors' path and keep them open," said Louis Miller, TIA's executive director. "The first person does it, then somebody else sees it and decides to do it, too. The train can't move until the doors are closed. It throws off the schedule."
The $321,000 warning system, which officials say could be on all 64 shuttle car entrances by July, is one of two new visual aids that will be added to TIA's systems this year.
The other, to be installed by the end of 2004, is a flight display system along the road outside the doors on the arrivals level so drivers pulling in to pick up passengers can see if flights are on time.
The $650,000 arrivals boards will be in place by December and are meant to help both meeters and greeters.
Traffic enforcement officials will also be able to tell drivers to move or find a parking space when flights have been delayed, Miller said.
The idea for the new displays came from a TIA patron, who passed on his idea to developer Al Austin, chairman of the aviation authority board.
In other action Thursday, the board continued the trend of hiring new staff to do work previously done under contract with outside sources.
Outside legal counsel was dropped several years ago in favor of staff attorneys, and a study is being done to determine if landscaping and maintenance can be done in-house.
The board approved the creation of 19 new staff positions this summer, most of which will be filled by people who will maintain the airport's new baggage handling systems. The cost of the new positions will be $664,000 a year.
Miller said it would have been significantly more expensive to enter into a contract with a company to maintain the new system.
